Street Cries/The Ship of Earth
From Wikisource
| ←I. Remonstrance | Street Cries II. The Ship of Earth by |
III. How Love Looked for Hell→ |
| This is the second poem of Lanier’s collection Street Cries. Lanier composed this poem in Prattville, Alabama in 1868. |
“Thou Ship of Earth, with Death, and Birth, and Life, and Sex aboard,
And fires of Desires burning hotly in the hold,
I fear thee, O! I fear thee, for I hear the tongue and sword
At battle on the deck, and the wild mutineers are bold!
“The dewdrop morn may fall from off the petal of the sky,
But all the deck is wet with blood and stains the crystal red.
A pilot, God, a pilot! for the helm is left awry,
And the best sailors in the ship lie there among the dead!”
